It’s been quite a while since I last used Evernote (free) as my main note-taking app on the iPhone, but something about this latest re-design of the app really caught my eye. I know that Patrick covered the major changes earlier this week, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and suppose that you won’t mind reading another take on this superb note-taking service. Patrick’s was really an overview and mini-review of the new features, so I’ve written this review from the perspective of a big note-taking fanatic’s return to the Great Green Elephant.
OF COPYING AND PASTING (CORRECTLY)
One of the main reasons I left Evernote a while back is because of how badly it treated plain text. Evernote CEO Phil Libin has always preached, especially on the awesome Evernote podcast, that the vision behind the service is to give you full control over your data. In other words, what goes into Evernote should also come out in the same shape and form.
Unfortunately, for the longest time, this was simply not the case, even when it came to copying plain text from Evernote and pasting it into the WordPress editor for this website. Paragraphs would look great within Evernote, but would turn into a mass of unbroken text upon pasting to the site.
Thankfully, somewhere along the way, Evernote solved this issue and I can now trust the service to accurately reflect my text whenever I paste it into another program. Phew!
BETTER TABS
One thing about the older Evernote for iPhone layout was that it simply wasn’t very tag or notebook friendly, and these features are big reasons for using Evernote in the first place. For example, here is a shot of what the previous Evernote UI looked like (taken from Softpedia):
This older version of Evernote didn’t even showcase notebooks or tags in the tabs, so you had to tap on the search bar at the top of the screen to start filtering your library of notes. The current iteration of the Evernote interface puts a lot more focus on how the app can help you keep things organized:
Notebooks (plus favourites) and Tags get their own tabs in Evernote 4.0, and much like the gigantic Simplenote 3.0 update last August, this re-design has drastically affected the way I use Evernote on-the-go. I’m much more willing to take the effort to organize notes into notebooks and assign tags now that these features are right in my face from the get-go.
EVERTWITTER
I don’t think Evernote ever really featured a standard iPhone UI. Sure, there are some elements, like the note view screen, that use standard navigation and feature buttons along the top and bottom, but aside from this, Evernote has always looked a little different.
Evernote 4.0’s design is still in keeping with that ‘different’ look, but it feels a lot more dynamic because there’s a lot more obvious power available on the surface (instead of being hidden away in a menu or filter). The All Notes and Notebook views kick a lot of ass with the non-standard scrolling implementation (swipe to scroll or filter notes by month by simply sliding a finger down the right side), and a simple tap on the top-right corner of the screen lets you find notes with pictures, miscellaneous file attachments, and geo-locations.
Notes tend to feel closer together and this change reminds me a lot of a Twitter timeline. The notebook view is probably a little more chaotic than before (especially without titles for picture notes — as others have pointed out in the Evernote blog comments), but it also lends to the feeling that Evernote is meant to capture streams of information from anywhere and everywhere. Clippings, picture notes, and random thoughts captured as audio notes — everything is welcome here.
My favourite re-design of all, however, is the New Note interface (which Patrick really doesn’t like). The giant plus symbol along the bottom has replaced the old New Note tab, and I think this change also has a little bit of Twitter inspiration behind it, since it looks so much like various Twitter app Compose screens. There are really only two fields to fiddle with (the title and main content area), and all the other buttons are placed in the space that the iPhone keyboard would normally take up. Evernote always makes sure to hide the keyboard when creating a new note so that you notice that these buttons are there, but I wouldn’t mind an advanced option to have the keyboard pop up and place me in the Title field upon creating a new note.
CONCLUSION
I hadn’t expected to love this new version of Evernote as much as I do, but I’ve been very pleasantly surprised. The app flies along beautifully on my 3GS and I really enjoyed taking the point form notes I made on my iPhone and writing the full review within the desktop client on my Mac.
Everybody has different note-taking habits so I won’t call Evernote 4.0 a must-have, but it’s certainly a big (and interesting) enough change from the old version to call it a must-try (and remember: if you do decide to switch to — or back to — Evernote, there are ways to preserve some of your metadata on import).
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